David Lassman / The Post-Standard Dr. Maria Ciciarelli, a physician at Crouse Hospital demonstrates how she uses of an iPad to a fetal heart monitor. Crouse and other area hospitals are using iPads and similar electronic devices to help doctors, staff do their jobs.

When her patients go to Crouse Hospital to give birth, Dr. Maria Ciciarelli can monitor their contractions and their babies’ heart rates on her iPad no matter where she is.

Having remote access to fetal monitoring is particularly important to Ciciarelli when she’s on call at home. Before remote access to this data was available, Ciciarelli would get a telephone call at home from a nurse or resident doctor at the hospital, giving her their verbal interpretation of what the fetal monitor showed.

Ciciarelli likes to be able to see and analyze the data herself.

At Crouse and other Syracuse hospitals, the iPad tablet computer and other similar devices are taking their place alongside stethoscopes and thermometers for doctors like Ciciarelli.

Crouse has distributed a dozen iPads to doctors since it began providing remote access in October to fetal monitoring, X-rays, lab results and other electronic patient information.

The patient information is secure so none of the data can be stored on iPads or any other remote devices, he said.

iPads and similar devices also are making inroads at St. Joseph’s and Upstate. Community General is making changes to its information system so its doctors also will be able to use the gadgets.

“Doctors are absolutely enthused by this thing,” said Dr. Neal Seidberg, a pediatrician who serves as Upstate’s chief medical informatics officer. “I see more and more of them as I walk around.”

He said Upstate is in the final stages of testing a software system that will allow it to make all medical records available remotely to doctors on iPads and other mobile devices. Many doctors already use iPhones, which give them access to the Internet and allow them to quickly look up information about diseases and drugs.

Seidberg said he regularly uses his iPhone to check on potential drug interactions.

“If I hear a patient is on four or five drugs I can poke them in and find out immediately if there are any interactions to watch out for,” he said. “You don’t have to turn and wait for a computer to boot up. It’s just there and ready to go.”

Doctors aren’t the only people in hospitals using iPads. St. Joe’s plans to give iPads to its board members so they can access online documents during board meetings, said Chuck Fennell, the hospital’s chief information officer. “This will give them access to timely data and a reference site they can go back to and look up committee meeting minutes,” he said.

Members of St. Joe’s infection prevention staff also use iPads to record information they gather as they monitor hand washing practices by hospital staff.

Employees of Crouse’s facilities department use iPads to remotely control the hospitals heating, ventilation and air conditioning system.

“If they get a call at 2 in the morning and they need to make an adjustment of the temperature in a labor and delivery room or an operating room suite, they can do that instantly from home on their iPad,” Williams said. “They used to have to come in and make a manual adjustment.”

About a dozen St. Joe’s doctors are using iPads to access lab results, X-rays and other images, electrocardiogram results and other electronic patient data, he said.

Battery life is one of the shortcomings of iPads and other computerized tablets, according to Fennell. A doctor working in the hospital seeing patients over the course of an eight-hour shift would probably have to plug in the tablet about every hours to recharge the battery, he said.

Seidberg of Upstate said another limitation of the iPad is its screen is not considered a medical diagnostic grade screen. “They are good to look at, but I wouldn’t want to make a diagnosis 100 percent based on what I see on the screen,” Seidberg said. “The resolution is not good enough yet.”

Williams of Crouse said he expects the iPad and similar devices to grow in popularity at his hospitals and others.